Joe Rogers: The Caitlyn Jenner next door

Caitlyn Jenner is no more real to me than Bruce Jenner ever was. The transition from improbably gifted male Olympic champion to implausibly famous female TV celebrity all played out far from my world. Pamela Raintree is real to me. But I knew her as Paul Spooner. Our paths crossed decades ago in elementary school. Paul was a new kid, arrived from parts unknown, skinny, scruffy, and not particularly sociable, or so it seemed. And, even by the low standard of small-town Mississippi at the time, obviously poor. Just how poor I didn't know until recently, when I read "French Dressing," Pamela's memoir. It recounts an early life spent at times with no running water, some of it without electricity. Of hand-me-downs for clothes, government commodities to supplement food. But the worst of it was getting beaten up on a regular basis. Some classmates knew or sensed more about Paul than I did. Physical reality notwithstanding, Paul identified as female. "I believe the cause was prenatal exposure to Diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic hormone used to prevent miscarriages," Pamela wrote to me recently. (As it turned out, the drug didn't actually prevent miscarriages, but increased the risk of cancer and, according to some, is associated with what is known as gender dysphoria.) Plus, "According to an aunt, I was initially reared as a girl," because Pamela's mother wanted one. "That would not have affected my gender identity, but it would have reinforced my self-perception as a female and laid the groundwork for living as a woman." All in all, "French Dressing" describes a confused and too often miserable childhood. "I never really associated the treatment I got at school with being transgender," Pamela wrote in the memoir. "That word hadn't even been coined. ... After a while, I learned to keep my mouth shut and pretend to be 'normal,' as best I could. My parents pretended not to notice anything either." Things did not improve appreciably with adulthood. "French Dressing" recounts years of struggle with gender issues, a life often spent teetering on the emotional and economic edges. Drugs, as you might imagine, played a significant role, especially during the years of military service. A marriage fell apart. There was far too much drama to recount here. But try to imagine a life of being at odds with the world, and yourself. "Pretending to be someone you aren't takes an enormous amount of discipline and concentration," Pamela wrote. "Acting demands that you consciously observe every little detail of everything you do and say." Finally, on April 1, 1997, a change that had been years in the making took place. Paul Spooner publicly became Pamela Raintree, the first name a nod to "Paul," the second an adaptation of a great-grandmother's last name, Rainwater. These days Pamela's ex-wife and daughter are not in contact with her. "My older brother and parents are deceased, leaving one unaccepting sister who only communicates infrequently, and a sister who doesn't really accept me as a woman, but still communicates when she is able," she told me. "French Dressing," which is not publicly available, is 186 pages of personal prose, poetry and drawings about the type of conflict most people will never experience. But human pain is universal, and parts of the book are quite poignant: "Seeing myself in the mirror hurt worse than anything anyone could say. I felt like a woman, dressed like a woman, and looked like a clown." "Among those who do know my background, I'm seen as something undefined, or as third gender perhaps, rather than male. For the most part, the company I keep is polite. They use all the proper pronouns, and would never discuss my status openly, especially in my presence. The women, however, restrict their discussion topics when I'm around, as they would if a man were present, and the men, even the real horn dogs, don't make passes at me. I'm certainly not complaining about that, although one day I still hope to break out of the rainbow prism, and just be an ordinary woman." I don't want to leave you with the impression that Pamela's life is without its triumphs. In December, a City Council member in Shreveport, La., where she lives, began an effort to repeal the city's new ordinance that prohibits discrimination against various groups, including transgender people. He cited biblical pronouncements of "an abomination." Pamela was

who showed up to protest. Noting the prescription in Leviticus of death for homosexuality, she dramatically offered the councilman a stone to cast "in case that your Bible talk isn't just a smokescreen for personal prejudices." The councilman withdrew the measure. Joe Rogers, a native of Moss Point, is a staff editor for The New York Times. He lives in New Hyde Park, N.Y., and can be reached at jrogink@gmail.com and on Twitter @jrogink.